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Travel Man: 48 Hours in...

British comedian Richard Ayoade and a celebrity guest, usually from the comedy world, spend 48 hours in a popular city to discover the must see tourist attractions. British comedian Richard Ayoade and a celebrity guest, usually from the comedy world, spend 48 hours in a popular city to discover the must see tourist attractions. British comedian Richard Ayoade and a celebrity guest, usually from the comedy world, spend 48 hours in a popular city to discover the must see tourist attractions.

• Richard Ayoade
• Stephen Mangan
• 32 User reviews
• 1 nomination total

Episodes 61

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• Connections Referenced in The Last Leg: Episode #19.4 (2019)

User reviews 32

• Jul 11, 2020
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• January 3, 2019 (United States)
• United Kingdom
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Technical specs

• Runtime 24 minutes
• 1080i (HDTV)
• 576i (SDTV)

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About Travel Man

Since 2015 Travel Man has been delivering the definitive guide to making the most of 48 hours (and sometimes a little longer) in some of the most exciting destinations in the world.   In the process it has become the most popular holiday show on UK television.

For the first 9 series the show was hosted by comedic polymath (Actor, Presenter Writer, Director) Richard Ayoade. Since 2020 the show’s host has been the comedic polymath (Comedian,  Presenter, Writer, Director) Joe Lycett . Joining them on their travels have been some of the finest and most available comic talents from Britain and the US, among them Bill Bailey, Sarah Millican, Lena Dunham, Jon Hamm and Paul Rudd.

The show’s aim remains the same; a mini-break with the boring bits taken out.  A guide that combines famous attractions, the quirky and the cultural, mixing the must-see and the offbeat, and making sure there is always lots to do, whether it’s a cookery class, an interactive tour, or even an art lesson.

Travel Man’s peak audience for an episode is 2.8 million and its YouTube channel attracts 2 million views a month.  The show has been nominated for 2 BAFTA awards and won 5 Royal Television Society Awards, the most recent of these being a Best Presenter gong for Joe Lycett.  Travel Man has been shown in 62 countries.  It has received glowing reviews from as far afield as the New York Times and the Australian Guardian, and was described as ‘hilarious and surprisingly informative’ by The Times.  

The show is produced in Birmingham by North One Television . 

Previous locations and guests include:

Ep1 - Barcelona & Kathy Burke 

Ep2 - Istanbul & Adam Hills

Ep3 - Iceland & Jessica Hyne s

Ep4 - Marrakech & Stephen Mangan

Ep1 - Vienna & Chris O’ Do wd

Ep2 - Paris & Mel Giedroy c

Ep3 - Copenhagen & Noel Fi elding

Ep4 - Moscow & Greg Davies

Ep5 - Seville & Rob Delaney

Ep6 - Venice & Jo Bra nd

Ep7 - Dubai & Johnny Vegas

Ep8 - Berlin & Roisin Cona ty

Ep1 - New York & Kat herine Ryan

Ep2 - Helsinki & Paul Rud d

Ep3 - Lisbon & Adam Buxton

Ep4 - Naples & Jack Dee

Xmas Special - Florence & Rebel Wilson

Ep1 - St Petersburg & Rob Beckett

Ep2 - Budapest & Aisling Bea

Ep3 - Tenerife & Lena Dunham

Ep4 - Miami & Rhod Gilbert

Ep1 - Rome & Matt Lucas

Ep2 - Valencia & Sara Pascoe

Ep3 - Amsterdam & Joe Lycett

Ep4 - Stockholm & Sally Philips

Xmas Special - Hong Kong & Jon H amm

Ep1 - Brussels & Lee Mac

Ep2 - Oslo & Faye Ripley

Ep3 - Madeira & Robert Webb

Ep4 - Cote D’Azur & Shazia Mirza

Ep1 - Zurich & Frank Sninner

Ep2 - Ibiza & Jessica Knappett

Ep3 - Ljubljana & Eddie Izzard

Ep4 - Milan & Morgana Robinson

Xmas Special - Jordan & David Baddiel

Ep1 - Athens & Dawn  French 

Ep2 Porto & Nish Kumar

Ep3 Tallin & Alice Levine

Ep4 Hamburg & Bob Mortimer

Ep1 - Dubrovnik & Stephen Merchant

Ep2 - Bergen & Lou Sanders

Ep3 - Krakow & Joe Wilkinson

Ep4 -Madrid & Ellie Taylor

Xmas Special - ICELAND & BILL BAILEY

Ep1 - BASQUE COUNTRY & James Acaster 

Ep2 SPLIT & Aisling Bea

Ep3 CYPRUS & Mo Gilligan

Ep4 ANTWERP & Katherine Parkinson

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Joe Lycett becomes Channel 4's Travel Man

Comedian Joe Lycett is to replace Richard Ayoade as the Travel Man when the show’s original long weekender packs his bag for one last series. 

Richard’s final, ninth series, will air later this year.  Joe picks up the passport baton for his debut series which will air in 2020.

Each episode takes a sideways look at how visitors might spend 48 hours in some of the world’s most popular mini-break destinations - and for each trip the Travel Man is joined by a well-known travel companion. Richard has previously explored over 40 cities including Copenhagen with Noel Fielding; Hong Kong with Mad Men actor Jon Hamm; Athens with Dawn French; Brussels with Lee Mack; Venice with Jo Brand; St Petersburg with Rob Beckett; and Florence with Hollywood actor Rebel Wilson.  Joe himself has even accompanied Richard on a weekend mini-break to Amsterdam.

Joe Lycett said: “I’m beyond excited to take over the brilliant, charming show that Richard has nurtured. I’m less excited about the number of times I’m going to have to take off my shoes at Birmingham Airport.”

Ian Dunkley, Commissioning Editor, Factual Entertainment added: “We’re delighted to welcome Joe onboard and to let him offer his own unique take on every whistle-stop, 48-hour mini-break we send him on.”

Travel Man is commissioned by Ian Dunkley, Commissioning Editor Factual Entertainment, Channel 4 and Executive Produced by Steve Gowans, Series Producer Chris Richards, Producer/Director Nicola Silk, North One Television.

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Travel Man: 96 Hours in Iceland review – farewell Richard Ayoade, hello Joe Lycett

The Birmingham comic is joined by Bill Bailey to eat tomatoes and form a punk band in his debut as the new host of Channel 4’s holiday show. But Ayoade fans may miss his trademark quirks

R ichard Ayoade brings a strange sense of dislocation with him everywhere he goes – as a presenter on The Crystal Maze , a panellist on quizshows and in characters such as Moss in The IT Crowd and Dean Learner and Thornton Reed in Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. It jibed particularly well with his stint as Channel 4’s eponymous Travel Man, a role from which he has stepped down. His detached oddity added a much-needed freshness to the travelogue format and gave his weekly companion a challenge to which to rise, lending each episode of the nine series he hosted a bit of bite.

This episode welcomes the new presenter, Joe Lycett , with what is effectively a Christmas special. Travel Man: 96 Hours in Iceland follows the usual format, but the participants – Lycett’s companion here is the suitably trollish Bill Bailey – get double the usual 48 hours to sample the delights of their destination.

It is a perfectly enjoyable hour in their company. They journey – partly by husky-drawn sledge – around a country that spreads 200 active volcanoes and a population the size of Coventry’s across nearly 100,000 gorgeously frozen square kilometres. They visit geothermally heated waters, eat in an all-tomato restaurant (within an enormous greenhouse that produces one-fifth of Iceland’s annual fruit production), watch the aurora borealis from a transparent hotel pod and jam as “Rancid Minibreak” in the sound booth of the Icelandic Punk Museum, which is housed in a repurposed public toilet.

They travel to Dimmuborgir, where the earth is said to meet the underworld, and to the Cave of the Yule Lads. These are 13 mischievous figures (with names such as Sausage Swiper, Door Slammer and Spoon Licker) of seasonal folklore. They put toys in the shoes of good children on Christmas Eve and leave potatoes in those of the others. They are – at least for the purposes of cameras and/or December – embodied by 13 men who seem very happy making believe in their rustic-elf costumes. Lycett looks discomfited by it all. Bailey looks as if he has come home.

It is a busy but essentially soothing 96 hours. As ever, the sights are captioned with salient facts and labelled with prices, giving us the total cost of the trip at the end of the show, in case we wish to get off our bums and – pandemic permitting – emulate it.

Lycett is a perfectly good presenter and Bailey a perfectly good guest. They alternate as foil and comedian while felting miniature troll-Baileys, boiling eggs on the ends of fishing lines dropped into thermal vents (“That’s what I got into showbiz for”) and gazing up at Guðjón Samúelsson ’s extraordinary concrete church, Hallgrímskirkja, which towers over Reykjavik.

There are moments when the pair stray into strained banter territory, but there is also plenty of good, easy stuff. Emerging from a tiny earthquake simulator in a shopping centre after an underwhelming seismic simulation, Lycett says thoughtfully: “I would say, in a shopping centre, this would be a space a Timpson could take.” As they fly in a tiny plane along Iceland’s longest fjord, Lycett notes that he is hoping to see a whale, but there appear to be none. “They’re famously very hard to book,” Bailey says, with the air of a father eager not to assuage a child’s disappointment. There is profound, visceral truth in Lycett’s comment that the stark, brutal Sun Voyager sculpture by Jón Gunnar Árnason, overlooking the glittering sea, looks like one of the Loose Women.

This is all fine – and may improve further with different guests bringing different energies to proceedings. Lycett is a sufficiently flexible and generous performer to embrace them. But if you were an Ayoade fan, you will miss his quirks, eccentricity and scalpel-sharp wit. The new version does not have the snap and crackle of the original. The change occasioned in me the kind of mild sorrow that discovering your favourite cafe has been take over by Starbucks might. We will all survive, obviously. Life will go on. But just a bit – a very little bit – flatter than before.

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• Bill Bailey

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In the company of prominent personalities, Joe Lycett explores famous tourist destinations in only 48 hours.

Season 2015

Season 2016, season 2017, season 2018, season 2019, season 2022, season 2023, season 2024.